Social Anthropology Seminar Monday, 6th November 2017 Dr Morten Pedersen – University of Copenhagen
| Dates: | 6 November 2017 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 18:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Speaker: | Dr Morten Pedersen |
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Social Anthropology Seminar
Monday, 6th November 2017
Dr Morten Pedersen – University of Copenhagen
Sublime Doubt. How Conservative Danish Christians Struggle to be True to Themselves
Description :
Based on fieldwork in the small but influential Danish Lutheran movement Tidehverv, this paper explores what is means to try to live one's life according to an explicitly Kierkegaard-inspired theological and ethical injunction, whose overarching ideal is to always be true to oneself. Specifically, the ethnography and analysis hone in the central role played by doubt among my interlocutors, who include some of Denmark’s most prominent national-conservative intellectuals and politicians. Far from signaling an inability or unwillingness to believe, doubt is here perceived to be an intrinsic element of and indeed a necessary path towards faith. It is argued that, in order to understand and take seriously this “obligation to doubt” in this and other Protestant contexts, we need to engage critically with recent anthropological work on doubt and skepticism. While this body of scholarship offers a welcome corrective to the over-emphasis on belief and conviction in previous anthropological work, it does not go far enough in addressing the questions and the conundrums raised by doubt as an ethnographic matter of concern. For example, the tendency to equate and conflate doubt with skepticism fails to the address what might be referred to as the sublime quality of doubt among some of my interlocutors - the potential and promise of doubt to act as a transcendental vehicle for reaching the divine.
2.016/.017
Second Floor Boardroom, Arthur Lewis Building
4:15 – 6:00pm
(Tea and coffee available outside the room from 4:00pm)
ALL WELCOME!
Speaker
Dr Morten Pedersen
Role: Speaker
Organisation: University of Copenhagen
Travel and Contact Information
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2nd Floor Boardroom - 2.016 / 017
Arthur Lewis Building
Manchester
